Archives for January 2018

Gone are the days of circling ads in the paper, sending in a paper resume through snail mail, and refusing to let anyone use your landline for a week, because you’re waiting for a call-back about a job. No longer can you rely solely on your qualifications, experience, and education to land you your dream job. Now employers want your private life served up elegantly next to your professional one. They still ask about your qualifications, your past experience, and your education, but they also want your internet habits, your privacy, and they want to know how much you’ve been paid. Don’t think that’s a problem? Think again.

An employer asking for your salary history seems innocent enough at first glance. They just want to know what sort of pay you’re accustomed to, and may want to compare the wages they intend to pay, against the wages that other companies are paying for virtually the same job. But the entire concept of wage history is a whole lot more “snake in the grass” than you may have originally believed. It’s a legal gateway for companies to give you a big, fat fucking, and in a few different ways.

We can argue about this until the cows come home if you’d like, (I’m a southern woman. Arguing is my first love.) but the fact of the matter remains that, statistically speaking, women are paid less than men for comparable jobs and hours put in. It’s a load of bullshit, it’s unfair, it’s gender discrimination, and under The Equal Pay Act of 1963, it’s fucking illegal. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still happen.

Though it’s an improvement from the 80s, when women only made 67 cents on each dollar that a man made, women still only make roughly 83% of what a man does for a comparable job. Full-time employees working year-round sink to 80%. That number goes up to around 90% for women between the ages of 25 and 34, meaning that young women and older women are getting a bigger screwing than the lucky ones in the middle. But either way, even 90% pay equality is a far cry from equal.

“When you cut through the bullshit, it’s a form of discrimination no matter which way you look at it.”

Companies have a tendency to use salary history as a nice, cushiony excuse to keep it that way. If, as a woman, you come into an interview as a potential hire and your wage history indicates that you’ve been paid 30% less than their male employees for the same job, then they’ve just landed on a golden ticket of an excuse to keep you at 30% less than your fellow male employees. After all, that’s what you made at the last place, right? By requesting your salary history, companies are able to ensure that women remain at the same historical disadvantage in the future that they had in the past.

So maybe you’re not a woman and this particular downfall of wage history doesn’t affect you, or perhaps you just don’t care. That’s cool, too. But don’t put your nose up and assume you’re out of the woods just yet. Salary history is a tool in their pocket for more than just screwing women out of equal pay. They can screw you out of deserved pay as well. If you were underpaid for your services in your last few jobs, employers have an opportunity to underpay you yet again. As long as companies continue to require your past salary, they will continue to pay you at that rate. Meaning, you could lose out on a $70,000 annual salary, simply because you’ve consistently been making a $40,000 annual salary for the same job.

That concept works the other way around as well. If they’re hiring for a position that only pays $40,000, and your wage history is in the $70,000 range, they’re not even going to consider your application, because you’re too damn expensive for them. So that means, even if you got canned from that $70,000 job, and you’re looking to take virtually anything before you end up on the streets eating that infamous Ramen, you’re not going to get that job. Unfortunately, your wage history makes your expectations look far too high.

The good news is, slowly but surely, salary history requirements are becoming as illegal as asking if you plan to have a baby – at least when it comes to hiring decisions and application processes. When you cut through the bullshit, it’s a form of discrimination no matter which way you look at it.

The biggest argument is generally that wage history requirements are the only way to gauge if a potential hire is within your budget. To that I say – quit being so lazy. It’s just as simple to request salary expectations as it is to require salary history. And by those measures, the guy that’s looking for a job under his previous salary isn’t automatically canned because he’s made too much in the past, and a woman isn’t automatically given a 30% pay cut, just because that’s what history has paid her.

While a few states, such as Massachusetts, Delaware, and California are hopping on the wagon to make wage history requirements illegal, it certainly hasn’t made it to the national level yet, and chances are, if you’re one of the millions in search of a job in America, you’re going to be asked about it. So how do you keep yourself safe from the discrimination of salary history?

You can always refuse to list your history on your application, but we all know, chances are you won’t even land an interview. Thebalance.com suggest to keep it honest, but keep it vague. It’s certainly not advisable to lie, because potential employers can find out the truth with as much as a quick phone call. The last thing you want is to be caught lying on an application when you really need a job. Instead, give them a ballpark range, or tell them that your salary was flexible. This may help give you a bit of negotiation room. Also, keep yourself up to date on the laws of salary history requirements in your area. If you happen to be in one of the lucky states that have banned the question, don’t fork over the information. And above all else, cross your fingers that the rest of America will pull their heads out of their asses and stop giving businesses and companies a free pass to get all up in your business.

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Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.

I’m contacted daily by IT recruiters; I have a pretty versatile skill set and there are a lot of jobs open in my area. Lately, I’ve noticed an uptick of what I call “super jobs” hitting my inbox. These are positions where employers try to cram multiple roles into one in order to save money. Here’s a good example of a super job I recently received. After the example, I’m going to break down for you what it really means. It is an altered version, as I removed all of the company’s identifying information:

Count those: that’s a minimum of eight roles for one person. EIGHT. Each would be a full-time responsibility at a reasonably staffed company, requiring a seasoned asset manager and IT professionals with advanced skills or certifications in these very separate areas: Networking, Databases, Business Intelligence, Sharepoint, Excel, and Programming. I know IT people who are advanced and/or certified in one of these areas. Maybe even two or three.

But I don’t know any who are at this level in six, let alone eight. They contacted me because it’s on my resume, and I do have a level of proficiency in those particular IT disciplines. I’ve been forced into doing this “super job” thing before, and I know exactly what it means: 10-12 hour days at the office, logging in every day when you get home from work, working all weekend every weekend. You get to be awakened in the middle of the night for emergencies, and no real time off because “you’re too important to be out of contact,” so they bother you the whole time you’re away.

I had one company give me an airtime USB with the expectation that I would carry it always and pull over to work on the side of the road if called while driving around on the weekend. I wish I was kidding. That amount of work for one person is neither reasonable nor sustainable. I think companies know this, and they don’t care. It’s not like the days of yore, where they would bring in talented people and groom them for the future. In today’s workplace, they want to bring you in, load you down, and burn you out. And once you’re gone, or dead, they shrug and bring in the next one.

But maybe you’re up for the challenge, if the price is right. I mean, they must be offering a six-figure salary to put up with all of that, right?

Nope. Try $40 an hour (83.2k yearly) as a contract to hire (so no benefits or PTO). It says three months, but in my experience, that always gets extended to between 12 and 18 months. If you’re lucky enough to survive that, and they eventually bring you into their company, expect that pay rate to drop to under 80k yearly. Oh, and you’ll be salaried, so kiss all that time and a half you were getting for the insane overtime hours, goodbye. In fact, now that they don’t have to pay for it, expect the demands to increase.

“Thanks, but no thanks”, I replied to the recruiter. Y’all ain’t killing me.

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John Spencer is a technology professional located in a blue city somewhere in deep red TX. He himself is best described as “purple”. He has a bachelor’s degree in English but works in technology and is best described as a jack of all IT trades but a master of none. He is currently working to correct the latter and is studying for a Master’s degree in technology while working full time.

Interviewing for a new job sucks. I would venture to say that it’s been that way since the dawn of time. I can just imagine the caveman, putting on his nice set of fur, brushing his hair with some dinosaur bones, pacing the floors of his cave, worrying himself silly over getting that senior petroglyphs designer position. He sat through hours of caveman questions, and waited days to receive a stone tablet in caveman mail saying he got the job. (Or however correspondence worked in the caveman days.)

I would imagine that job interviewing will continue to be this way until the world explodes or the sun engulfs us all in a massive blast of cosmic proportions. Job interviewing just sucks, man. But as we’re coming into a heavier age of technology, it has somehow managed to suck even more than usual.

Social media. Everyone has it. Some use it more than others. Some are across dozens of platforms, ranging from Facebook, to Tinder, to Instagram, while others have nothing more than a 10 year old Facebook account that they only use to play Farmville on the weekends. Either way, social media has become a crucial part of day to day life across the globe for young and old, and companies are catching on to that fact quickly.

If you’ve ever applied for a job, especially through an online application (which is virtually all that exists anymore) then you most likely know what I’m talking about. You fill in all the expected blanks; education history, previous job history, address, telephone number and basic information, and of course any qualifications you may have that you feel could set you apart from the rest of the pool of applicants. Then, there’s social media. Nearly everyone asks for it now. Usually towards the end of your application there will be a blank where you’re expected to fill in your social media information. They want links to your Facebook, Twitter, and any other blogs or websites you may be affiliated with.

“I watched dozens of highly qualified applications hit the shredder because of their social media accounts.”

If you’re anything like me, it sets in a serious existential dread almost immediately. Have I posted anything monumentally shitty lately? I’m a liberal atheist, and boy does my page show it. My luck, the hiring manager is a conservative Christian and the minuscule shot I had at this shitty job is about to go swirling down the drain. Did my friend actually post the shitty picture of us shit-faced in the club at 8PM on a Tuesday? God, was I wearing that Godforsaken hat?! Then you end up just leaving it blank, in hopes that no one will mention it on the off chance that you actually get an interview.

Thing is, if you leave it blank, you’re most likely not going to get an interview anyway. If you happen to be one of the lucky few that do, I can almost guarantee you that’ll be one of the first things they ask about. “Well, Mrs. Thompson, your credentials and qualifications look superb, but we were wondering why you didn’t include the information asking for your social media? It’s a crucial part of the hiring process. We’re going to need that information before we can seriously consider you for the position that you’re otherwise perfect for.” It will begin to feel a bit like blackmail. Either you cough up the incriminating Facebook page, or you resolve to a life of homelessness.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the stories in the news (while scrolling through that damned Facebook feed) where someone posted something that was less than flattering, and within a week they were canned from their long-term job and Satan himself wouldn’t hire the fucker. Sometimes, when it happens to be some hateful, piece of shit KKK bigot, it gives me a little smirk and a big sense of “serves your ass right.” But the fact of the matter is, it’s a gross violation of privacy.

Do I personally believe you should live a life of shitty Ramen in a 500 square foot apartment if you’re a bigoted bag of dicks? You bet your ass I do. But when it really comes down to it, your personal viewpoints, political stance, and opinions should not affect your ability to keep or hold a job; (Except for when it comes to public servants, like the police, or politicians) but it does.

Companies are becoming more and more dependent on social media history when it comes to hiring new employees. I personally remember an instance at my last “real” job, where we were in need of a new office manager. The ladies all sat around, armed with their phones in hand, typing every applicants name into their Facebook search bar. They had a partying picture from last New Years? “Trash. Ooohh, they’re definitely a Democrat. Double trash. God, look at that woman’s make up! Bet she peels it off with a putty knife every night. Don’t need her coming in here, to this respectable establishment, looking like a whore. Nope. Oh sweet mother of Mary, she retweeted Hilary Clinton! What is this world coming to?! Just can’t find good help these days.”

I watched dozens of highly qualified applications hit the shredder because of their social media accounts. They ended up hiring a highly unqualified conservative that required far more training than we were prepared to give. All because her Facebook page was wholesome.

I’ve lost more freelancing gigs and contracts than I can count because they creeped my Facebook page and blog, and found out that I was a liberal atheist. I’ve been chastised in front of my fellow employees because I posted a meme to my Facebook page the night before that my boss was not in agreement with. I don’t know how many times my application was tossed without me being aware, because of what they found across my social media. And I don’t even use Twitter. God help the folks that have an account on everything across the board.

The internet is an awesome thing, and so is social media. It helps us stay in touch with our families and friends, and even lends a hand in getting us a date or a late-night booty call. It kicks ass in a lot of ways. But it also opens up a door to destroy your privacy, and companies are exploiting the fuck out of that.

Obviously, the best way to handle that problem would be for companies to keep their big, fat noses out of your private life, and hiring potential employees based on the shit that actually matters: like your education, experience, and qualifications. But let’s face it; that ain’t gonna fucking happen. Hiring managers, and people in general, see an opportunity to dig through your life and a golden chance to legally discriminate against you. All they have to say is, “Well, your social media profiles led us to believe that you will not fit well with our company.” Boom. You’re out, because you posted a shitty meme, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

So, since companies show no signs of gaining any respect for a person’s basic right to a private life, you kinda have no other option than to fend for yourself. Set your pages to private, and for God’s sake, don’t be adding your boss or fellow employees. They may seem like, or even be, good work friends, but I’d bet my last buck you can’t trust them all. Keep your work and personal life separate. You’ll thank yourself for it later. If the interviewer happens to question why all of your social media is set to private, which they will, give them the ole, “Well, you know, you can never be too safe on the internet these days.” It’ll usually shut them up. If they demand that you open your profiles for scrutiny, fuck them. It may be a job lost, but it most likely wasn’t a job worth having if they’re demanding your private life on a platter.

And honestly, as much as it pains me to even be typing this, maybe watch what you’re posting. The fact of the matter is, nothing on the internet is a secret. Someone can, and will gain access to it if they really want to. You sent a nude photo over Snapchat back in July? Some asshat with a badass computer and too much time on their hands can probably find the damn thing.

I am a firm believer in clinging tight and standing proud for what you believe in. But I’m also no fan of cardboard boxes for a home, and I don’t like Ramen. So be smart with what you decide to throw out to the big, wide ocean that is the internet. Stick to your guns when a potential employer is trying to pry into your private life. And maybe one day, you’ll get as lucky as I did, and find someone that thinks that the world is on a massive, downhill slide to suckiness, just like you do. If you’re just lucky enough, they’ll hire you to write about it.

Support Andrea’s writing on our site by subscribing to our newsletter on this link, Subscribe here!

Andrea is a freelance writer based out of Kentucky. She is the mother to a 3 year old little girl and step-mother to a 6 year old boy. She’s been married to her husband and best friend for 5 years. She enjoys fishing, camping, hiking and the occasional glass of wine by a bonfire.

Recent employment numbers (Nov, 2017) would seem to suggest that the job market in the U.S. has never been better. According to proponents of the report, the 4.1 total unemployment percentage means that America’s economy is booming and that it’s a worker’s market out there. If you watch any of the major news shows, they’ll mostly tell you that too. Here’s a quick clip of such a show.

Alright America. We Did It !! Shut it all down. Can’t get better than this! Right?…. Right? I mean, watching that clip, why not be exuberant and victorious? Well, because that clip is masking the truth and is wildly misleading. And why is that clip misleading? After all, we are close to full employment, meaning anyone who wants a job can find one. And that’s great, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The truth is, there are a lot of ways to fool the American people, and a jobs report like November’s is one such way.

So, how are these impressive employment numbers fooling people? Well, what’s missing is any context behind those numbers. What those numbers really mean, and why? Here’s some important information regarding the November jobs report. The following tells you how the report counts unemployed and employed people.

“Any individual who has been actively looking for a job within the past four weeks and is capable of taking on a job is considered unemployed. In contrast, you’re considered employed if you have a job. Even if you’re only working temporarily or you’re not working because you’re on maternity leave or you’re sick, you’re still counted as one of the employed people in the labor force.”

So people working temporarily, as well as part-time workers, are both included. Also, people who have given up looking for work are not included as unemployed. That number is around 1.5 million. Another problem with this report is that it doesn’t delve into underemployment as part of the employment numbers. Underemployed people who work part time, but want to work full time are considered fully employed. The number of underemployed people in the U.S. is estimated to be 22 million. Again, these are people who are currently part of that rosy employment number. Do you think these workers would think everything is great in the job market?

Here are more stark signs that the employment numbers grossly exaggerate the current job market’s success. If the job market is so great, why haven’t worker’s wages gone up? (only 0.2% per year, which is negligible growth). Are the jobs being created mostly well paying or at least have stability?(No, they are mostly low paying service sector jobs where hours and even employment can wildly fluctuate. This was seen in the CNN clip)

One of the unfortunate side effects of a good jobs report is that people who can’t find good work may think it’s their fault, and people at large, who only see the “great” employment numbers, but not the meaning behind them, may think people without jobs are lazy or not looking hard enough.

The truth is, most people won’t take a job if they can’t survive on the pay and hours. That makes sense. Why would anyone work just to pay half their bills? Earnest job searchers are disheartened when they discover the truth we’ve known here at The Underemployed Life for years: landing a stable job, with a living wage, has never been harder.